Scientific discovery in the age of artificial intelligence

Nature volume 620, pages 47–60 (2023)Cite this article

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is being increasingly integrated into scientific discovery to augment and accelerate research, helping scientists to generate hypotheses, design experiments, collect and interpret large datasets, and gain insights that might not have been possible using traditional scientific methods alone. Here we examine breakthroughs over the past decade that include self-supervised learning, which allows models to be trained on vast amounts of unlabelled data, and geometric deep learning, which leverages knowledge about the structure of scientific data to enhance model accuracy and efficiency. Generative AI methods can create designs, such as small-molecule drugs and proteins, by analysing diverse data modalities, including images and sequences. We discuss how these methods can help scientists throughout the scientific process and the central issues that remain despite such advances. Both developers and users of AI toolsneed a better understanding of when such approaches need improvement, and challenges posed by poor data quality and stewardship remain. These issues cut across scientific disciplines and require developing foundational algorithmic approaches that can contribute to scientific understanding or acquire it autonomously, making them critical areas of focus for AI innovation.

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M.Z. gratefully acknowledges the support of the National Institutes of Health under R01HD108794, U.S. Air Force under FA8702-15-D-0001, awards from Harvard Data Science Initiative, Amazon Faculty Research, Google Research Scholar Program, Bayer Early Excellence in Science, AstraZeneca Research, Roche Alliance with Distinguished Scientists, and Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence. C.P.G. and Y.D. acknowledge the support from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives Program (MURI) FA9550-18-1-0136, Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) FA9550-21-1-0316, and awards from Scientific Autonomous Reasoning Agent (SARA), and AI for Discovery Assistant (AIDA). Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders. We thank D. Hassabis, A. Davies, S. Mohamed, Z. Li, K. Ma, Z. Qiao, E. Weinstein, A. V. Weller, Y. Zhong and A. M. Brandt for discussions on the paper.

Hanchen Wang

Present address: Department of Research and Early Development, Genentech Inc, South San Francisco, CA, USA

Hanchen Wang

Present address: Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

These authors contributed equally: Hanchen Wang, Tianfan Fu, Yuanqi Du

Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Hanchen Wang & Joan Lasenby

Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

Hanchen Wang & Anima Anandkumar

Department of Computational Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

Tianfan Fu

Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

Yuanqi Du & Carla P. Gomes

Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Wenhao Gao & Connor W. Coley

Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Kexin Huang & Jure Leskovec

Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Ziming Liu

Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Payal Chandak

Mila – Quebec AI Institute, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Shengchao Liu, Andreea Deac, Jian Tang & Yoshua Bengio

Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Shengchao Liu, Andreea Deac & Yoshua Bengio

Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

Peter Van Katwyk & Karianne Bergen

Data Science Institute, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

Peter Van Katwyk & Karianne Bergen

NVIDIA, Santa Clara, CA, USA

Anima Anandkumar

Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, New York, NY, USA

Shirley Ho

Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

Shirley Ho

Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Shirley Ho

Department of Physics and Center for Data Science, New York University, New York, NY, USA

Shirley Ho & Petar Veličković

Google DeepMind, London, UK

Pushmeet Kohli

Microsoft Research, Beijing, China

Tie-Yan Liu

Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Arjun Manrai & Marinka Zitnik

Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Debora Marks

Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA

Debora Marks & Marinka Zitnik

Deep Forest Sciences, Palo Alto, CA, USA

Bharath Ramsundar

BioMap, Beijing, China

Le Song

Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Le Song

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA

Jimeng Sun

HEC Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Jian Tang

CIFAR AI Chair, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Jian Tang

Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Petar Veličković

University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Max Welling

Microsoft Research Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Max Welling

DP Technology, Beijing, China

Linfeng Zhang

AI for Science Institute, Beijing, China

Linfeng Zhang

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Connor W. Coley

Harvard Data Science Initiative, Cambridge, MA, USA

Marinka Zitnik

Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Marinka Zitnik

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All authors contributed to the design and writing of the paper, helped shape the research, provided critical feedback, and commented on the paper and its revisions. H.W., T.F., Y.D. and M.Z conceived the study and were responsible for overall direction and planning. W.G., K.H. and Z.L. contributed equally to this work (equal second authorship) and are listed alphabetically.

Correspondence to Marinka Zitnik.

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Wang, H., Fu, T., Du, Y. et al. Scientific discovery in the age of artificial intelligence. Nature 620, 47–60 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06221-2

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Received: 30 March 2022

Accepted: 16 May 2023

Published: 02 August 2023

Issue Date: 03 August 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06221-2

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